The Autobiography of Kerwin Maegraith: Who is Kerwin Maegraith?

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Who is Kerwin Maegraith?

Kerwin Maegraith 1903-70 F.R.S.A. (Lon.)

Maegraith drew Picasso in Paris, Einstein and Lawrence of Arabia in London, Hemingway in Hawaii and lived with Errol Flynn in Sydney. Kerwin Maegraith, caricaturist, journalist and true Aussie larrikin, encountered the most famous people of his time from the twenties to the sixties.

Profile from The International Who's Who, 1958:

Former member of the staff of Sunday Times, Sydney, Sydney Daily Mirror, and Adelaide Advertiser; caricatures in Sydney Bulletin, Sporting and Dramatic, The Bystander, The Sketch, Daily Herald (London), Sydney Morning Herald, Daily Telegraph.

Toured England with [Australian Cricket] Test Team in 1934; War Artist attached to 1st Aircraft Carrier Squadron, British Pacific Fleet. First artist to picturegram [fax] sporting cartoons from Cricket Test Matches in Australia to London Daily Mail; creator of radio-cartoons Who's Zoo series; wrote book and lyrics of musical play It Ain't Cricket. Publications: Celebrities in Caricature, Who's Who in Adelaide, Our Arborosities, Wigs and Wags.

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Exclusive Extract - ERROL FLYNN and Kerwin paint the town red

I boarded at a terraced mansion in Sydney and I was on the third floor. Among the boarders was an Adelaide lad, Vernon. He shared the big front room just underneath me, with a very bright and young personality who introduced himself as Errol Flynn.

Errol had, so he said, enjoyed a career at Shore Grammar School. He would tell us about how he often seduced the housemaid at Shore, leading her along the edge of the building at midnight, after his masters were sound asleep.

From the day Flynn came to the palace of gems we lived at, 'things had been bright,' they said. Once, the detectives chasing the razor gang paid us a visit. Another night Errol came home sozzled form a bookmaker's party at Randwick.

Our landlady, I should explain, was an Irish Catholic. ('lt's the British we are under, curse them,' she would tell us.

'What about Ned Kelly?' asked Errol.

'Oh, he was a lovely Irish boy, he was,' answered the landlady.

'Yes, they hanged him,' answered the rude young Mr Flynn.)

Well, one night Errol came home drunk. The old girl had lit the plaster statue of the Virgin with a candle at its foot. The statue was about five feet high and coloured. A big bunch of flowers stood at the foot of the image and Errol, thinking it was just another pretty girl, made a lunge. Both he and the statue, in a thousand bits, hurled down two flights of stairs.

The enraged landlady, awoken from her slumber, tossed Mr Flynn and his belongings right out on the footpath. But with his winning ways he was back next morning and forgiven. He was about 17 or 18 at this time, as wild a young man as Sydney ever saw.

Freelancing as an artist was an up and down game. I had good weeks and starving ones and, like Flynn and Vernon, I was back about ten weeks in my board. Then came the festival of Christmas. When Errol found out that there was nothing better on the menu than roast beef he let fly abuse at the landlady in the dining room. She arose, hastily.'When Mr Flynn and his friends pay their board, they will get turkey,' she pronounced.

Read more in The Autobiography of Kerwin Maegraith - order your copy today